Your wedding day is one of the most unforgettable days of your life. The last thing you want is for the event to be remembered because of a catastrophe!
There are countless ways the big day can be wrecked. The maid of honour gets appendicitis, a plumbing problem floods the reception hall or guests end up eating take away because the caterer has gone bankrupt!
Even more potential calamities lurk in today's tumultuous world. Airports closed because of terror alerts or virus scares could keep key wedding participants from arriving on time. And several brides and grooms have been shipped overseas to fulfill military service obligations before they got to say "I do." Such are the incidents for which wedding insurance was invented.
Costly Weddings Mean Costly Concerns
Leah Ingram is the author of five bridal books and countless articles
for national bridal magazines. She says that with the amount of
money spent on weddings (the average is more than £16,000),
getting wedding insurance is an essential aspect of your wedding
day planning.
"The average wedding costs as much as a down payment on a house," Ingram says. "It's a major investment. It just makes sense to get wedding insurance."
She stresses that the wedding insurance can do wonders for a bride's peace of mind, especially with the number of wedding services involved and the variety of issues that can't be controlled.
Wedding insurance is a well-established product in Great Britain. Standard policies range from £50 to £500. Coverage goes as high as £50,000 for weddings that have to be cancelled or postponed.
Insurance cover typically includes wedding cancellation or postponement if a member of the bridal party dies, gets sick, is injured or can't come to the wedding because of military service or the shutdown of commercial transportation. (Pre-existing medical conditions are excluded.)
It also will help pay for the reconvening of the bridal party for new pictures if the photographer loses the film or it's damaged at the lab, new wedding rings if they're lost, and replacement of damaged, stolen or lost wedding gifts.
Cold feet, however, are not covered by the insurance! If a bride or groom has a change of heart, the cost of the cancelled wedding comes out of his or her own pocket.
Brides and grooms almost certainly will need personal liability insurance. This insurance is separate from the standard wedding policy, which covers money you've shelled out on products and services for your wedding. Liability insurance covers you in the event of an accident or injury related to your wedding.
Since liability insurance is additional coverage, you'll pay extra for it, but it's a cost you'll have to bear. Your wedding won't happen at most venues without liability insurance, says certified wedding consultant Joyce Becker, the founding director of the Wedding Consultation Certificate program at San Francisco State University.
If you want to get married at some very romantic place, you can bet you won't step onsite without an insurance policy covering things such as damage to the hall or an injury to a guest or a staff member.
Then there's the alcohol issue. If a guest has too much to drink and then gets in an accident or a brawl, the bride and groom almost certainly will be among those named in a lawsuit.
"It doesn't matter what wedding it is, people will leave drunk unless you don't serve alcohol," Sandau says. "It is a potential minefield."
Couples planning an at-home wedding should review their homeowners policy liability limits. Naylor says many policies won't cover private special events.
"You have to look at your home from a risk-analysis perspective," she says. "Talk to your agent. It's very important to check your insurance because that's lawsuitville."
Vetting Your Suppliers
Brides and grooms can avoid many of the problems covered by wedding
insurance by carefully reading contracts and only using licensed
and insured suppliers.
Scardina Becker has worked on hundreds of weddings in her other capacity as president of the San Francisco-based special-event planning firm Events of Distinction. She won't take on clients who want friends or family members to bake the wedding cake, take the photos or provide some other wedding service. All it takes is one person to get food poisoning, trip over a camera tripod or claim they burst an eardrum because Uncle Louie's band was too loud.
You want each supplier contract to contain a "hold harmless" clause that releases you from responsibility if something happens because of their negligence. The contract also should provide indemnification. That means that if you get named in a lawsuit (and as the host, you probably will), the supplier involved in the litigation will pay for your defence. They'll want you to do the same for them.
Scardina Becker cites a case in which an inebriated wedding guest died in a fall as he left the reception. The bride called the following day to express her sympathies, but the widow wouldn't talk to her. Instead, the bride was named as a defendant in a lawsuit.
"Who may be implicated in the litigation?" Scardina Becker asks. "A number of potential people: the bride for issuing the invitation, the wedding planner who planned the event, the venue for hosting the event, the bartender who served the alcohol beverage.
"Who should have wedding insurance? Everyone."
Author: Pat Curry
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